Kevin Frisch: With enemies like this, who needs friends?

Thursday

It would be ironic if former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer paved the way for his arch-enemy — one of them, anyway: Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno — to take his place.

It would be ironic if former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer paved the way for his arch-enemy — one of them, anyway: Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno — to take his place.

But I’m beginning to wonder if that might not happen.

Spitzer resigned earlier this month after being implicated in the probe of a high-priced prostitution outfit called the Emperors Club (motto: “Anonymity Guaranteed ... Except You, Client 9). The lawmaker with a reputation for moral rectitude proved not to be so moral (although, obviously, he had the rectitude down). So Eliot’s out of office, his biggest chores these days being walking his dog and ducking thrown pieces of pottery.

Gov. David Paterson is in. And he’s been good for roughly a surprise a day.

Twenty-four hours after being sworn in, Paterson held a news conference to clear the air about past marital affairs. Like Frank Sinatra singing of regrets, he’s had a few. So, too has the state’s new first lady. Apparently, both Patersons strayed when their marriage went through a bumpy spell. But the affairs ended years ago, they said.

Further, Gov. Paterson insisted no campaign money was used to finance his liaisons and maintained the women never worked directly for him (I almost typed “directly under him” but, well, never mind). Still, by week’s end he was reimbursing his campaign committee $253 for a pair of stays at a Manhattan hotel. (News reports focusing on whether anything improper took place during these stays buried the lede: Paterson found a hotel in Manhattan that charges just $126.50 a night.)

The governor began this week by getting off the topic of adultery — and on to the topic of drug use. He said he had sampled marijuana and cocaine as a young man but, “I don’t think I’ve touched marijuana since the late ‘70s.” As of this writing, he has not had to reimburse his campaign committee for any dime bags, so that’s good news.

But the following day, the topic was back to “Women Other Than Your Wife.”

The Albany Times Union reported that Paterson traveled to South Carolina last October with “an aide identified as his former lover,” to work on behalf of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign.

Ridiculous, said Paterson’s office. The governor and his former paramour, who’s a state employee, did no such thing as travel together to South Carolina in October to work on the campaign. They traveled together to Iowa in November and to South Carolina in January to work on the campaign.

There were also questions being raised about why Paterson would have stayed repeatedly in an Albany-area hotel just 20 minutes or so from his home. The Paterson camp explained Paterson needed to be close to the Capitol for state business.
Sitting quietly on the sidelines during this flurry of disclosures and allegations is Bruno. He took it none too kindly that the Spitzer administration may have improperly used state police in a political scheme to discredit him. He didn’t like Spitzer and he didn’t trust him. And now, thanks to Spitzer, he’s acting lieutenant governor and next in line to the gubernatorial throne.

And should the trickle of allegations spattering Paterson become a torrent? Well, there’s no sign Paterson is being hurt politically so far. A poll released this week by the Sienna Research Institute found 58 percent of New Yorkers had a favorable opinion of the new governor and only 10 percent had an unfavorable opinion. (If you ever wondered how many New Yorkers never experimented with recreational drugs or strayed in their marriage, that 10 percent might not be a bad guess.) But if the allegations continue and there turns out to be campaign or state money tied up in some extramarital shenanigans, who knows?

By mid-week, Paterson was growing weary of the attention, saying he would answer no further questions about the matters. Oh and one more thing: That $500 his campaign spent at Bloomingdale’s and Tiffany’s over the last three years? That was for Christmas presents for campaign workers, not girlfriends.